Description

Forty years after it first appeared in the Bronx block-party scene, B-Boys looks back on the incredible journey of a dance form that has never stopped evolving.
Once considered a pillar of one of the most influential cultural movements to come out of the late 20th century, today breaking has spread far beyond the boundaries of hip-hop. As told through a series of interviews with the dancers who made breaking legendary, B-Boys retraces its artistic, social, and cultural roots to reveal the diverse styles, codes, and influences that made the dance form what it is today.

Issues of identity and aesthetics played a key role in the evolution of breaking and hip hop culture - and have become even more significant today as competitions and show business have gradually transformed the core principles that long defined the dance form. All the way from the United States to Germany, France, and Korea, the struggles, hopes, and aspirations of several generations of young men and women have shaped what is now a popular and widespread phenomenon: from the New York City street gangs who faced off in the earliest breaking "battles", from the young African-Americans and Latinos who were determined to make a name for themselves in American society, from the young Germans who, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, took breaking to the next level, from the French who have been pushing boundaries since the 1990s, whether on the marbled floors of Châtelet-Les Halles, or on the stages of the most prestigious venues, or from the young South Koreans who now master the dance form after decades of cultural repression.